Stockton Rush, pilot of the Titan Submersible, pronounced dead at age 61

Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of OceanGate and pilot of the submarine Titan, was pronounced dead Thursday after his ship was found in pieces at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near the rusting wreckage of the RMS Titanic. He was 61.

Mr. Rush oversaw finance and engineering for OceanGate, a private tourism and research company based in Everett, Washington, which he founded in 2009. In 2012, he founded the OceanGate Foundation, a non-profit organization that encourages technology development to advance marine science, history, and archaeology.

Mr. Rush first looked to the sky for adventure. In 1981, when he was 19, he was believed to be the world’s youngest jet transport rated pilot.

But if the sky was the limit, it was too limited for Mr. Rush.

“I wanted to be the first person on Mars,” he told Fast Company magazine in 2017.

By the time he was 44, he had given up on his dream of becoming an astronaut. Interplanetary travel seemed economically unfeasible for the foreseeable future. But he saw opportunities in underwater travel and said he was willing to take risks and bend the rules to achieve his goals.

“I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed,” he said in an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning last year. “Don’t get in your car. Do nothing. At some point you’re going to take some risk, and it’s really a matter of risk and reward. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”

Richard Stockton Rush III was the scion of one of San Francisco’s most famous families. He was descended on his father’s side from two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton.

He was born on March 31, 1962 in San Francisco. His father is president of the Peregrine Oil and Gas Company in Burlingame, California, and the Natoma Company, which manages condominiums and other investment properties in and around Sacramento. His grandfather was the president of the American President Lines shipping company. Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco is named after his grandmother.

The Davies family’s inherited wealth came from Ralph K. Davies, who started at Standard Oil of California as a 15-year-old office boy and rose to become the youngest executive in the company’s history.

Stockton, as Mr. Rush was called, graduated Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and received a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 1984.

During summer vacations, he served as first officer of the DC-8, flying from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for Overseas National Airways. The year he graduated, he joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as a flight test engineer for the F-15 program and was assigned as the company’s representative at Edwards Air Force Base for the APG-63 radar test protocol.

Prior to founding OceanGate, he was a member of the board of directors of BlueView Technologies, a sonar developer in Seattle, and president of Remote Control Technologies, which makes remotely controlled devices. He was also a trustee of the Seattle Museum of Flight from 2003 to 2007.

In 1986, he married Wendy Hollings Weil, a licensed pilot, substitute teacher, and consultant account manager in magazine publishing. She became OceanGate’s communications director.

Her grandfather, Richard Weil Jr., was president of Macy’s New York, and she was the great-great-granddaughter of retail magnate Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, two of the richest people who died when the Titanic sank. Mr. Straus was part owner of Macy’s.

Titanic survivors recalled seeing Mr. Straus refuse a seat on a lifeboat when women and children were still waiting to flee the sinking ship. Ida Straus, his wife of four decades, stated that she would not leave her husband, and the two were seen arm-in-arm on the deck of the Titanic as the ship sank.

In his CBS News interview, Mr. Rush that it was wise when exploring the ocean at depths of thousands of feet to avoid fishing nets, overhangs and other hazards. But, he said, security concerns can also hinder a reckless career in which risk pays off not only in profit, but also in unforgettable experiences.

“It’s really a life-changing experience, and there aren’t many things like that,” he told Fast Company. “Instead of spending $65,000 to climb Mount Everest, maybe die and live in a miserable base camp for a month, you can change your life in a week.”

His travels in the Titan brought him the adventure he longed for.

“I wanted to be like Captain Kirk,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the passenger in the back. And I realized that the ocean is the universe. That’s where life is.”